Zak Brown is cross examined by Nick De Marco KC, centre as Alex Palou, bottom right watches on
Priscilla Coleman/MB Media
McLaren chief Zak Brown is no stranger to tight battles on track and sparring in press conferences with rival F1 team bosses, but he came face-to-face with a formidable new adversary in court today.
Where he’s previously had to head-off Christian Horner and Toto Wolff, Brown sparred for six hours at the High Court with Nick De Marco KC, the lawyer representing Alex Palou, as McLaren seeks $20.7m (£15.43m) in damages for this year’s Indy 500 winner reneging on his IndyCar contract with the team.
Palou and his associated management companies are challenging the amount claimed.
De Marco began the day accusing Brown of “stringing Palou along” with the prospect of a Formula 1 drive. He then grilled Brown in a cross-examination which built up into a series of exchanges that were at times heated and others comedic as the two disagreed on the finer detail of emails, covered how to turn on WhatsApp’s disappearing messages and raised the question of whether 2022 Indy 500 champion Marcus Ericsson is actually any good.
A protracted argument over the subject of an email chain — which Brown claimed was to do with the financial aspect of Kyle Larson’s Indy 500 entries and which De Marco disagreed with — almost dissolved into farce at one point when the lawyer exclaimed “In the past half hour, you have spoken absolute rubbish which you have just made up on the spot. Perhaps you have convinced yourself of it.”
Brown pithily replied: “I think you are talking rubbish”.
Brown gave robust responses in court
Priscilla Coleman/MB Media
The email chain featured a conversation between Brown and McLaren finance director Andy Greenfield. In explaining why Greenfield was asking so many questions in the exchanges, Brown witheringly said: “His knowledge of IndyCar, I would say, is equivalent to yours.”
Another debate raged on what makes an “A level” driver: one of the calibre that could replace Palou after he elected to not race for McLaren.
McLaren chief has dismissed accusations that he misled drivers in contract discussions, amid the ongoing court case involving IndyCar champion Palou
De Marco began to reel off names, new and old, that Brown could have elected to hire in place of the Spaniard, at one point highlighting 2014 Indy 500 winner Ryan Hunter-Reay. Brown replied: “I could have also approached Nigel Mansell, but he has not driven for a while.”
When De Marco mentioned that the American had last won a race in 2018, the McLaren boss queried, “what year is it now?”
McLaren’s case against Palou is partly based on reduced income from one of its main sponsors NTT Data, which has recently announced it will be ending its involvement with the McLaren IndyCar squad following the 2026 season.
Some of the court conversations have centred around disappearing Whatsapp messages
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The firm was supposed to be funding Palou’s slated No7 McLaren car, which has since toiled in the hands of young pay driver Nolan Siegel.
Brown said that as an emergency option to replace Palou when he announced he would not be driving for McLaren, he made a last-minute “multi-million dollar” offer to Marcus Ericsson to join the team for 2024.
McLaren claims it was “plunged into crisis” and lost $20.7m when Alex Palou broke his contract with the team. But Palou’s lawyers say that team boss Zak Brown deceived him into believing he’d have an F1 drive
He claimed that, as an Indy 500 winner, the Swede would have been a satisfactory replacement for NTT, but also reasoned that the scenario would have been a compromise and condemned Ericsson’s grand prix efforts: “He wasn’t very good in F1.”
But when Ericsson rejected the McLaren offer, Brown said that he did the”honourable thing” in calling NTT to voluntarily renegotiate a lower sponsorship agreement, reflecting the lack of an A-class driver — even though the company had not yet asked him to.
“You are trying to claim all of this money from our client,” said De Marco, and suggested that Brown was giving the money away.
“I have been doing this for 30 years,” Brown responded, adding that NTT would have demanded a reduction. “I know exactly what would have come had I not said I would make good on the situation”.
The questioning became heated and the tempo increased but Brown, who made his name as an unforgiving motor sport sponsorship negotiator, wasn’t cowed. As the cross-examination became more intense, De Marco said “I am just testing your evidence”. Brown came back with: “I wish you would test my integrity”.
The American was interrogated over his use of WhatsApp’s disappearing messages function, after being ordered to conserve evidence relating to the current case in August 2023. McLaren policy is that staff should use the function, the court heard.
De Marco asked about a conversation with two senior McLaren IndyCar officials. “Do you see that what appears to have happened on 30 October 2023, you have turned on disappearing messages?”
“Yes. Perhaps because it was off,” replied Brown. “Sometimes it turns itself off… it can happen inadvertently.”
Brown said that turning on the function would not have destroyed potential evidence. “As I said about ten times now,” he responded gruffly. “I was compliant in preserving documents associated with this case.”
The case continues.
